notes toward a discussion of the Jews

1.  The contemporary Jew.

[From an actual correspondence with my imaginary friend "Gottlieb" in March of 2008, referencing an earlier communication.]

SHORTY   What I said was that the contemporary Jew should be no more preoccupied by the eating of pig than the contemporary American voter should be by the annexation of the Northwest territories.

     Why?  It's a question of translation, isn't it—as opposed to mere transposition(?).  For the non–English majors/teachers in the room, we might instead think of it as a question of the spirit of the law as opposed to the letter.  Reportedly, the reason why we have trouble not stuffing ourselves when we eat junk food—why once you pop you can't stop—is that we evolved in a world in which the only stuff that tasted so good was rare and nutritious (which is why it's delicious to us); we respond to candy as if it's super-fruit, and if we say to ourselves, "Got to stop eating this," millions of years of confused evolution scream, "Don't stop now!  Who knows when you'll next get to eat such nutritious food!"  In a world without candy, this response would be "right."  Today, not so much.

     If Abraham or Moses were born today, do we really believe he'd act the same way, believe the same things?  And do we imagine that these men, or tribes as the case may be, lived in much better times than we?  All value judgment aside, they are different times: we face different problems, believe—even know different things about the world.  The idea that the best way to be true to the spirit—even the history—of Judaism is to play-act at being prehistoric (give or take a few millennia) strikes me as ill considered.  The original Jews were not emulating caveman; they were engaging with their universe in a new and arguably a creative way.  If you want to be like them, do not ape their behavior or follow their rules.  Be to your world what they were to theirs.

"GOTTLIEB"   That's so good.  I totally love it.  Oh, I love it.  It's my favorite.  Except the annexation of the Northwest Territories.  I don't know what you're talking about.  I think I'm going to paraphrase you.

    Have we got any other reference for this idea?  Or am I just going to cite you when I talk about it?

SHORTY  How about the payment or nonpayment of taxes to the British monarch?

    Just me, as far as I can tell.  If it's based on anything else, it's without my conscious knowledge.

    ...I mean, I read it in the Talmud.

"GOTTLIEB"  The aping, which runs contrary to "traditional" Jewish values of creativity and progress.  It's really an attack on thoughtless fundamentalism.  Challenging too because it forces one to decide which fundamental values (related to marriage, gender, violence, charity, race) are worth preserving and which are not.  But what is so brilliant is that in Judaism, it's not heretical.  Right?  This is what we do, because of what they did...

2.  I.e., the Jew is not a horseshoe crab.

The horseshoe crab is remarkable for staying pretty much exactly the same for hundreds of millions of years—445 million, sez Wikipedia.  These motherfuckers are crazy!  They're like 2,000 times older than we are; basically they're these weird semi-aquatic bugs with spiny shells that they drag along the sand, and apparently they're just perfect, as far as evolution is concerned.

I thought of them because as I was reading Harold Bloom's article on Yiddish in The New York Review of Books, I began to wonder whether any other single and distinct people has survived for quite as long in so close to the same form.  But human beings do not survive through rigidity.  The horseshoe crab's immune system reportedly responds to any kind of infection by turning the little monster's insides into jelly: very effective in protecting the community, not so helpful to the individual.  The survival of the horseshoe crab seems to have everything to do with good fortune: the damned thing just hit upon some good formula that has continued to work out great through the eons, over two galactic years—10% of the time the sun has even existed... whatever, so they're old.  But it's hard to say that the Jews have just hit on a good formula.  (Or is our focus on all the hardships misleading?  Is it the survival that really stands out?)

What are we to learn from the survival of the Jews?  Has survival itself become integral to the Jewish experience, or are it and Diaspora just something the Jewish people had to get through in order to arrive at some kind of destination?  Bloom writes, "Leo Strauss provocatively observed that American Jewry was not part of the Exile while Israeli society was... In 2008, I wonder if Strauss's contention is still disputable" (NYRB 25); I'm inclined to agree, assuming I understand...  Not to mention that I'm moved enough by Gandhi and MLK's philosophy of nonviolence that I can't help but feel that the Jews' becoming a militaristic people (in addition to betraying my understanding of what Judaism is about) also suggests retroactively that our hardships in the past were the result of weakness, that we had no moral superiority over our oppressors, that the only thing separating us from them was that they were stronger... as if the only moral lesson we could derive from the Holocaust were that Jews need to study martial arts and familiarize themselves with automatic weapons...an interpretation that I know many would not find the slightest bit absurd or even problematic.

3.  A question of translation, a translation of questions.

Bloom has come up with a new translation for the ehyeh asher ehyeh that Yahweh pulls out when Moses asks him his name.  When I was 12 I learned it as "I AM THAT I AM"; Bloom never seemed satisfied by this, and I've seen him lay it out in various different ways.  In the Nov. 6, 2008, issue of The New York Review (linked to above), Bloom translates it thus: "I will be present or absent wherever and whenever I choose to be."

Elsewhere in the same article, Bloom writes, "Yiddish is the Hamlet of languages; the Prince of Denmark's play abounds with questionable enigmas and a plethora of instances of the word 'questions.'  [Benjamin] Harshav emphasizes the derivation of Yiddish questioning from Talmudic procedures and of Kafka's parallel imitation of Talmudic learning in the self-questionings of his characters.  As illustrations I would suggest: 'Why not?'  'Why ask?'  'Who asks?'  'What is the alternative?'  'What and how does it mean?'  'If that is the case, then does not a question arise?'  These all can be seen as deriving from the Talmud."

And: "The name Yiddish...is much younger than the language itself...  Earlier the name was Yiddish–Taytsh, 'Jewish–German,' a compound that lingered in fartaytshn, 'to translate,' 'to explain.'"

[I love the connection between translate, which originally (read etymologically) means carrying or bearing something, and explain, which originally (ditto) means spreading something out, as to make it even and clear...]

Finally: "An imageless God had made humankind in His own image, and then had prohibited human emulation in image-making."  Where does that put us?

CONCLUSION

Um . . . I like bacon?